


To Understand the Power That's Inside

by Kaoupa



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-27
Updated: 2020-04-07
Packaged: 2021-03-01 08:22:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 4,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23348377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kaoupa/pseuds/Kaoupa
Summary: Pokemon and the Crystal Gems work well together. And even the greatest of heroes, on both sides, needs a helping hand.8 generations of Legendary Pokemon and the Crystal Gems.
Comments: 24
Kudos: 39





	1. The Crystal Mew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't own Steven Universe or Pokemon.

In the Gem War, the beings referred to as “Pokemon” had quickly become a massive problem for the forces of Homeworld.

Most of them were not very dangerous - a squad of Rubies could easily deal with any number of the mobile plant pokemon without trouble, and as long as the coasts and the lakes and rivers were avoided, the massive numbers of aquatic pokemon could not overwhelm their Quartzes. 

The psychic types were the biggest problem, however. 

The best Sapphires in the Courts could not always account for them - despite their much-vaunted Future Vision, it had become apparent that they had somehow learned how to disrupt it.

And in the gem war, there had become one Psychic type who was feared above all others.

No gem knew what it looked like - for it could change shape. Nobody could tell when it was sneaking into their encampment, for it seemingly had every power that any gem, human, or pokemon could use. Including the power to read minds, or to lull others into dropping their guard.

They were like ghosts, slipping in and out, one at a time, leaving only horror stories in their wake and poofed or (rarely) shattered gems. The Crystal Gems, at best, worked with them loosely - whenever they went to an encampment of Homeworld, it was typically one where every single gem had been cut down by the trespassers.

Nobody knew what it was. What it looked like. Every attempt to flush them out led to disaster elsewhere. Every single test to detect beings that weren’t gems was effortlessly bypassed in some manner or another - whether it was by trickery, or simply lashing out without warning and crushing every gem in the camp, before destroying everything that they had built and sending their gems, poofed or crushed, to Homeworld’s main encampments as another warning.

The Quartzes and Agates whispered what they thought it might truly look like, in the corners of Homeworld. Some unfathomable monster, capable of scaring you to death with a look. An unbelievable _thing. Something_ that by all rights should not have been able to exist as a physical thing. A twisted creation to surpass anything the Crystal Gems or Yellow Diamond's mad labs created.

Prizes were offered, for proof of its death. No Quartz, even the Ultimate, ever had any delusions as to the chance of that reward ever being collected.

All they could ever do, was ask the Diamonds from afar for their support should they ever meet it. Or beg it for mercy.

The ultimate terror. The sower of chaos. The infiltrator of their society. The being whose true name nobody even knew.

  
  
  


“Hey there, lil guy! Everyone, they’re back!”

In the Crystal Gem encampment, a small flock of them were gathering around one of their newest friends. They rarely, if ever, saw them personally, given how rare and reclusive they were.

But seeing them at all was a treat, given how sweet they were.

“You want a berry?” Bismuth grinned, holding out a pecha berry.

The pokemon across from her pulled it out of her hands with a psychic tug, pulled it into their mouth, and happily started chewing, sending out waves of joy.

“Mew!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mew can be - if they want to be - very, very, scary.
> 
> It turns out a shapeshifter with one of the widest ranges of superpowers in fiction and millennia to hone them is not someone you want to cross.


	2. Celebi's Rose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trying to hide your past from somebody who can travel to it to watch is a hopeless venture.

Rose Quartz just sighed as she looked up at the massive Obsidian edifice, that she and her teammates were slowly constructing around the Temple, that would hold the corrupted gems until they could find a way to heal them. The Machamp that lived in the nearby forest had also been helping, too - while they could probably have lifted the rocks themselves, extra help was not something she would turn down.

_ Hello there. _

Rose yelped and spun around, her shield already going up at the unfamiliar voice and combat reflexes bracing for a jump.

She started calming down when she saw who was behind her, though.

She didn’t recognize this pokemon, but it was clearly not a Homeworld Gem come to try to drag her back.

“Hello. You startled me.”

_ I tend to do that. I’m Celebi - it’s nice to meet you, Rose Quartz. _

“The pleasure is mine.” She smiled, feeling a little better, before blinking as she saw the small pokemon extend their hand out. “Um…”

_ Oh, right. It’s called a handshake. It’s used as a greeting, in some other times. I get them confused… _

“Other… times?” Rose wasn’t sure how to react to that.

_ I’m a time traveler. My job is to ensure that the timestream is stable, for the most part. That things go smoothly, without disruptions. And so, every so often, I take a look at major figures, to ensure everything is going well for them. _

“Major figures?” Rose asked, unease rising in her. “I suppose as the Rebellion’s leader, I qualify, even… if we failed.”

_ That’s part of it, yes.  _ Celebi replied. The lack of further detail only made Rose more uneasy.

_ But either way, before you go to bed scared, I want to say something, okay?  _ Celebi gave her a kind look.  _ I’ve been policing the timestream for eons, and… I know your past. It was horrible, in more than one way. And Rose? If you are afraid I’ll reject you because of what you did, well… Trust me, with my job, I have to watch over potential futures and pasts all the time. Judging someone for what they did, what they might do… I can’t really say I care for it. _

Something strange passed over Rose. She would realize later that it was relief. “I…”

_ If you need a while to come up with a reply, that’s no problem. I can wait.  _ Celebi reached out her arm.  _ I’ve always got my ears open. If you need someone to talk to who won’t judge you, I’ll listen, okay? I promise. _

And with that, the time traveller vanished without warning, likely off to some distant future or unknown past.

Rose smiled a little, as she left.


	3. The Green Streak of the Skies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peridot thought things were going to go well. She thought incorrectly.

Peridot was not having a good day.

And it had started out very well. She’d been assigned fifteen separate Red Eyes to investigate Earth, by Yellow Diamond herself! The sheer magnitude of the task she had been assigned was enough to make her weak at the knees. This - getting a task specially for her from her Diamond - was something that other Peridots could only dream of.

One day, she knew that she would look back at this as the peak of her experience on Homeworld. The highest she could ever reach.

And now, she was contacting her Diamond, dread in her every movement, to explain why every single Red Eye had been blasted out of the sky from afar by an unknown attacker.

And it was a single attacker. The last scans she’d gotten from each Red Eye revealed that the blasts all had a definite source in common - the energy beams even looked alike. Whatever shot them down had spared only a single ship to do so.

And that was what had Peridot so worried. What sort of ship could move so quickly, without releasing any detectable engine pulses? She’d had all of the Red Eyes scanning for known gem ship emissions, and whatever had destroyed them hadn’t released any known emissions.

Explaining to her Diamond how the only data she had been able to gather on Earth was that a single specific attacker (or a single class of ship) had been used to destroy the Red Eyes was a conversation she was already dreading. The Peridots nearby, who had heard what her mission was (and overheard their destruction) were already leaning as far away as possible, as though Yellow Diamond wouldn’t be able to tell that they were there. She probably already knew who was manning the other stations near Peridot Facet 2F5L Cut 5XG. 

And, slowly, she made the call.

“My, My... “ she started to stammer weakly, on to stop mid-sentence. She was not expecting a yellow Pearl to respond.   
  
“You have reached the Yellow Diamond control room. What is the purpose of your call.”

“I… am Peridot! I was assigned a mission by Yellow Diamond herself!”

“Which Peridot?” The Pearl asked, not even bothering to pay attention.

“Peridot Facet 2F5L Cut 5XG! I was assigned to send a number of Red Eyes to Earth!” Peridot quickly replied.

This seemingly caught the Pearl’s attention. “My Diamond, would you like to take this call? A response seems to have come back for the investigation mission to Earth."

“No. Pearl, you deal with it.” came a voice from offscreen, one that even though Peridot couldn’t see the speaker, she already knew deep in her gem whose voice it was.

“As you wish, my Diamond!” Yellow Pearl sang, turning back around. “What has happened to the Red Eyes, then? What intelligence have they found?”

“I… nothing. The… the Red Eyes were all destroyed by an unknown attacker before they reached sufficiently close distance to begin deep scans.”

Peridot knew, deep in her soul, right that second, that even if an order to have her executed came from just Yellow Pearl and not her Diamond, nobody would ever question it.

She was going to be shards before-

Then, Yellow Pearl caught her off guard. She sighed. “The energy beams that destroyed the targets were all determined to be emitted from likely a single source, or a single identical ship type?”

“I - yes. I can send you the readings I got now! It was clearly a stealthed ship of some kind, all the scans I ran were unable to detect any familiar emissions common to all of the areas near the Red Eye’s destruction.” Peridot replied, already tapping furiously at the report and sending it across the line.

Yellow Pearl took one look at the readings, and her eyes went wide.

Peridot, for the rest of her life, would say that she had never seen a Pearl look so horrified.

“MY DIAMOND! RAY-” Yellow Pearl stopped mid-shout, then shut off the line, leaving Peridot very confused until the day she went to Earth and was given a lecture by Steven on Legendary Pokemon.

  
  
  


Trailing across the atmosphere, Rayquaza scanned the void of space, eyes a hundred times sharper than any Gigantamax Inteleon or Butterfree looking for the slightest trace of gleaming metallic red.

After yet another pass came up without any new targets, he exhaled, ozone emanating from his nostrils as he took in the most recent issue.

The Homeworld Gems were returning. Necrozma’s twisted and lost children were coming to fill the holes in their souls that could never be filled with the way they were living.

His duty was clear, one that Arceus had entrusted him with long ago. The skies were his to safeguard, but the ground, the seas, the people… they were the domains of others.

The other guardians of his homeworld had to be warned.

Like last time, the Gems would find no breeding ground here either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rayquaza's depiction as the guardian of the skies here is mostly drawn from Ashes of the Past. His duty there is to keep the planet safe from extraterrestrial threats - mostly by destroying meteors that have a large chance of causing civilization-scale damage if they touch down. The gems fit under "extraterrestrial threat".
> 
> Also in keeping with Ashes of the Past, Rayquaza is one of the greatest snipers in all of fiction. Not quite at the level of John Stewart during the Sinestro Corps War, but still very good.
> 
> And Yellow Pearl is mostly concerned because she thought that organic life forms were supposed to grow old and die eventually. Learning that Rayquaza's not dead would be cause for concern, considering she works for the top brass of the opposing side.


	4. The Trio of the Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They might not be noticeable at first glance, or seem very powerful compared to the other Legendary Pokemon.
> 
> Considering what three people with incomplete, unmastered, shadowy imitations of their powers could do if they meant to do harm, and all the stories about them when they decided to hurt people, though... that impression would be a colossal mistake.

Inside the gem temple, a psychically constructed portal silently opened.

And three small shapes, none of them even the size of an Era 2 Peridot, glided through the air into the Burning Room.

Without any verbal communication, they glided apart, each taking up a position at one of the corners of the room. They had been practicing this for some time in private, healing a single target with their combined might - but they had never done it with so many afflicted before.

Uxie flew low to the ground, knowledge humming through his body and spirit - and the aura that he emanated burning a strange black color (really, anyone who took a close look would say it was, like a black hole, the absence of all color), the hum emanating alongside it so low that the ground almost shook with his tune.

Across from him, Mesprit began to sing a strange, haunting song, the aura present in their presence burning an orange like the color of a flower, the blue sky not at all visible against its petals.

And Azelf quietly - well, if you had only a human’s auditory range, it would be almost impossible to tell that she was emanating any noise at all. The tune was at the very edge of hearing, just so faint that you could tell there was something there, just not what. But so faint that all you could do was focus on it - focus on what you could barely hear so fiercely that it became something you could hear clearly.

And if you focused hard enough, you might be able to see the faint aura of purple suffusing everything.

And as the three pokemon who held domain over the mind sang together, another portal opened up beneath them, in tandem with their unified strength. And slowly, one by one, the bubbles began to float telepathically downwards.

  
  
  


“How did they all get here?!” 

Pearl was, to say the least, concerned. Every last gem in the Burning Room had gone missing, and they’d all turned up without warning at Rose’s Fountain, of all places!

And more importantly… “Garnet, why didn’t you see this!? How could you have missed this!”

“I… the future was clouded.” Garnet replied uncertainly, unsure how else to reply. “I… I…” 

“GUYS!” Came a terrified yelp from Amethyst, at the far edge of the Fountain, where she had been scooping up the bubbles.

One of them, at the far edge where none of them were grabbing the corrupted gems, had popped, and a form was taking shape faster than any of them could react.

“Oh, no…” Rose muttered, already hastily tapping the undersides of every bubble within reach, her gem already glowing.

But before she could grab her shield, something happened. Something that none of them had been expecting. The gem took… a normal shape.

The shape of Biggs Jasper.

And after that, nothing was the same for the Crystal Gems.

  
  
  


From afar, Azelf, Uxie, and Mesprit watched happily, as their old allies rejoiced, singing and dancing, tears falling from their eyes. Rose was almost going to make her fountain overflow, with how many she was shedding. She probably wouldn’t notice the (relatively large) amounts that each of them had drank in order to keep their strength up.

They would contact them tomorrow.

Today, they would let them celebrate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Legendary Pokemon of the mind (with help from Rose Quartz) can cure corruption. Yup.


	5. The Soulsinger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even if they didn't look, act, or seem that powerful, even the smallest of them was still a legend in their own right, and their legends were ones they had earned.

“Aaah…” 

The song that Meloetta was singing was not one that could really be understood or spoken in normal words. It… rang, deep within your heart and soul. That was the only way to really describe it. It… entranced you. Touched something deep inside, something that words could not give understanding to beyond vague emotional statements.

At least, that was the case if you were a human, or even a pokemon.

For gems, usually, the song that she sang for organic life forms or the beings that had been born from their “heartsongs”, just… sounded like a wonderful song, really, but not one that quite rang true with who they were.

So when she learned that organic life forms and gems worked differently in that way, Meloetta had started developing a new song. And eventually, after speaking with Uxie - and the Tapus - she had found a tune that worked.

Then, she had heard the tune of the Corrupting Light, the twisting of body and mind that the so-called deities had launched (and any true deity, in her mind, would have no need to assert itself so horribly). One that she and many of her old friends had been helping fight the aftereffects of for many years.

So, she’d found a new way to sing. One as far removed from the horrible, off-key, twisted melody she had heard that night.

And she’d found helpers, after she saw the effect it had on one of the poor gems who had been twisted by the abuse of their own mistresses.

And as her song rang from afar, at the healing spring made by the only one of them who knew what deities were supposed to be like, Meloetta smiled, and she sang.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was always planning for Meloetta to be the legendary pokemon of generation 5, but when I starting writing this oneshot, I was not expecting for it to go in the direction it did.
> 
> I am not disappointed with how it turned out, however.


	6. The Bringer of the End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Perhaps one of the biggest realizations and issues with life is that you have to learn how to deal with the fact that you'll die.
> 
> Of course, if you (theoretically) live forever and so does everyone around you, this can be hard.

For gems, death was unnatural. A thing that should not happen - something that should never happen, to loyal citizens of the Empire.

Even shattered gems, in theory, were not dead. No matter how merciful death might be, as long as the life force used to make them ran through their gemstones, they were not truly dead. 

Pokemon were not always too different from them, to be fair. Ghost pokemon could, if they wanted to, persist for thousands of years after their living body’s death (the Aegislash that accompanied Rose Quartz as her oldest and strongest partner had “lived” since before the end of the Rebellion).

But the Ghost type were not generally bound to the physical universe - in the end, if they truly wished to pass on to their afterlife, there was little that could stop them.

(If you went to the Turnback Cave, some people said that if you went in deep enough, past even Giratina’s lair, you would find yourself in the beginning of the after. And that sometimes, if the living came back from their view of the afterlife, that sometimes something or someone would be quietly following them, just out of eyesight…)

Death was, to the residents of Earth, natural.

And nothing on Earth represented death quite as well as a particular Dark pokemon.

Quietly, Yveltal touched down on the ground, viewing the area before her. Slowly, a black aura crept out, reaching to the split-apart shards that had infused the ground of the Strawberry Battlefield. The gems whose shards had soaked almost into the soil itself, binding them here.

And as she reached out, their songs vanished, the little remaining life in their shards fading away. Yveltal reached further, stretching the shadow of her wings to the edges of the battlefield, the life inside it dying slowly as she gathered it up.  Yveltal took a look around, and she hummed contentment to herself.

And then, she took flight once more.

She had a meeting with her brother Xerneas to get to, and a great deal of life energy to hand over.

And as the Destruction Pokemon flew away, to go see her counterpart, in the soil of the Strawberry Battlefield, for the first time in centuries things were quiet.

It would not stay that way forever. But it would be that way until life returned. 

Hopefully, this time there would be no twisted, tortured, constantly-suffering parodies of living involved there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No SU character in this short. Maybe a bit grim.
> 
> And I am not sure how I feel about the explanation that shattered gems can be put back together, frankly. It is a bit of a happy ending, but there wasn't really any foreshadowing for it.


	7. The Blinding One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Homeworld and Earth are connected, in Steven Universe. But in the Pokemon world, they are also connected long before that in a way that you might not expect.

Watchtower Town, as it was known, was very rare occurrence in the Galar region - a city located inside the Wild Area, where Dynamax pokemon roamed daily and humans rarely tread without their friends, a full pokemon team to help them, and plenty of repels and poke dolls.

Of course, most of the citizens of Watchtower Town were Crystal Gems, and they were mostly capable of holding their own against the majority of Earth’s pokemon even without involving their own partners or fusion.

The every-so-often invasion of a random corrupted gem or various Dynamax and Gigantamax pokemon did require that guards be deployed and that the buildings all were to be made from gem metals, though.

But, even considering the less-than-safe nature of the gem settlement (something that a lot of the Quartzes there loved), one building in particular was more heavily guarded than any other. Guards were sent in and out every eight hours round the clock, with one shift only leaving when the new shift had all arrived.

Also, there wasn’t a door. And the majority of the armor and fortifications added by the various construction crews of the Crystal Gems had been on the inside. Plus, it was set into the ground - only the topmost level was visible, and with the lack of a door all anyone would see if they didn’t know what they were looking at was a oddly-placed ten-foot black hexagon.

It wasn’t hard to figure out why the gems had taken all these precautions if you knew who was inside, though.

The Lake Sprites did not require a door to heal corrupted gems, and between Teleport and the warp pad that only took incoming traffic from certain people and from certain locations, bubbles were easy to isolate. Every uncorrupted and unbubbled gem on Earth that knew the corruptions were stored inside of that tower made a point of avoiding it when they could.

Everyone knew that, so nobody questioned it.

Almost nobody knew, however, about the only non-gem occupant of the underground tower.

In the replacement/counterpart of the Burning Room, the floor had been designed by Bismuth herself on a request from Rose Quartz, to resemble a tile pattern.

So if you knew the exact pattern to hit on those tiles, and what tiles you could not step on if you didn’t want to reset the sequence, a part of the floor would open. No staircase or ladder was provided - the drop was only ten feet. 

But if you didn’t know the exact combination to hit on the floor of the now-revealed room, an alert would be sent out, the previously-open floor would close, and you would be trapped in the now shut-down room.

Hitting the right combination, however, would open another section of the room - this time, the wall. Only about 8 inches square of wall, though. Just enough for a gem to shapeshift their way into the next room.

And if you managed to make your way in there, you would behold a sight that every gem in existence would find utterly grisly.

There were _colossal gem (shards) spread around the room._

They were all bubbled. However, they were also all polished, and each was reflecting various colors of the rainbow.

If you had a scanner specifically geared for it, you would notice that they all gave the same signature of power/magic. If you didn’t know the story behind these shards, you might just think that they were some gem type that was dangerous enough for some reason that they had to be isolated from everything else. It was an easy mistake to make, considering the shards were all cut, polished, and looked like true gems to some degree.

And if you did know the story behind these shards, you would notice that they were half-right, and also notice the Apricorn-like poke ball in the center of the room, behind several nearly-invisible glass panels. As well as the illuminators that made up the walls, ceiling, and floor. (The sort you would find in one of the light deprivation chambers the Authority sometimes used as a form of torture, to prevent prisoners from fading away. Here, they were on full-time, and the rainbows reflected from the prisms were more beautiful than any rainbow nature could produce).

The Apricorn Ball was bubbled as well, and kept firmly shut. The ball’s inhabitant had also been Hypnotized long ago, and between the Ball and the bubble outside it, she slept deeply and dreamlessly - and painlessly.

Sometimes, on days when they were feeling somewhat existential, Rose Quartz, Bismuth, Amethyst, Pearl, or Garnet would come down to this room, both to bask in the full-light spectrum illuminators and to quietly look at the rainbows.

They hadn’t found everything yet. There were still missing pieces.

Considering that they had found every Z-Crystal on Earth, though… those pieces were at this point scattered throughout gemkind itself. And born as they were from the loss of the chamber’s mistress, they might never find all of them.

But they had kindergarten and gemetic technicians coming up with replicas of the sundered prism, finding all of the countless visible and invisible lights that emanated from them. They could only pray that one day, they would find a way to replace all the spaces in between them that had been cut away or lost.

Pray that one day, without the loss of countless lives, the being whose fractured prism had seeded the first members of the gem race on Homeworld far away, would be healed to walk among her descendants.

And some days, they would quietly kneel, before the sleeping form of the one who unwittingly gave them their lives, and whisper words of gratitude.

They could never have caught her if she hadn’t let herself be captured. Given herself willingly to sleep, knowing she might never wake up. She could have consumed every gem on Earth if she wanted, before eating the sun. And born from light as they were, they all knew they could not have done anything to stop her - the one who ate light.

But she had chosen to trust them. Her children.

And that was more than the other beings who could be considered their mothers had ever done for them.

“ _Thank you, Necrozma..._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was longer than I thought, and turned out… well, religious. It was inspired by the story “Lobotomy”, here on AO3, detailing Necrozma’s unwilling fall, and how she got her prism broken.


	8. The Heroes of the Sword and Shield

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heroes often work together and help each other. And heroes can help each other without having to battle villains.

“GREETINGS, GALAR! HOW ARE WE ALL DOING TODAY, EVERYONE?!”

The cheering was deafening. Wyndon Stadium was packed to the outer edges, with every last seat filled and more than a few people at the front gates trying to beg the ticket collectors to let them stand somewhere.

The finals were over. There was one person left - the person who had done something nearly unthinkable, and captured the Legendary Pokemon Eternatus. The pokemon that had been the (unknown) source of Dynamaxing in the Galarian region for so long, and was still serving as the power source for dynamaxing thanks to the enormous amounts of Dynamax energy they had released into the very land over time.

And soon, they would be challenging the Champion. The Undefeated Champion - the most highly ranked pokemon trainer in Galar. The trainer who had tamed two pokemon who were Legendary in their own right.

A clash of legends. The first challenge they would have had for the title in a very long time. How in the world could any true Galarian Pokemon fan not be excited?

A hush fell over the crowd. The two contestants were stepping forward onto the pitch.

But something was… wrong.

The Champion was… looking very off today.

“Hello, everyone! Sorry to disappoint you… but Steven had other things he needed to do today, and we couldn’t put it off any longer!” Connie Maheswaran announced, waving at the slightly-hushed crowd. “I’m sorry that I can’t be with him today, but even though I’m as heartbroken as you all that my husband can’t be here… and that things will be boring, since the judges decided I couldn’t fight in doubles...”

Everything went quiet.

Then, Connie rose up triumphantly, Stevonnie’s Champion cape flowing out behind her, and a Poke Ball releasing her most powerful teammate onto the field. Her hand was already down at her belt, where her other teammates besides Mamoswine rested, ready to fight - Pelipper, Hydreigon, Aegislash, a Rapid Strikes Urshifu - and her first partner, Orbeetle.

As the blue-furred Zacian took form, sword clenched in her teeth, the crowd went berserk.

“LET’S ALL DO OUR BEST TO HAVE A CHAMPION TIME, GALAR!!”

“You know, I really wish I had someone like her in my life, Steven…” Leon said absently, staring at the television screen as Connie sent out her first pokemon. “You are one lucky man.”

“I’m only lucky these days Leon, what with… pretty much everything that happened when I was a teenager…” Steven started to tremble.

Before he could start descending into a flashback, two things interrupted him. Both his own mental techniques, honed over many years of therapy, and the feeling of rough pink fur under his fingers.

Zamazenta, his “Emotional Support Dog” vest on, grumbled patiently as he nuzzled Steven lightly. Steven rubbed his head affectionately. “Thanks.”

“Ahem.” One of the other people in the room coughed lightly, her light exhalation bringing both Steven and Leon back to the present.

“Right, anyways…” Leon began to speak, rising from his chair. “Who’s first today?”

“Can I go? If Eternatus hadn’t been released and messed stuff up with all those Dynamax pokemon, I could have been Stevonnie for the Champion’s Cup.” Steven spoke up, sighing.

“As good a reason as any. Anyone have an issue?” Leon replied, looking around. There was no visible protest. “All right, you go first.”

“Thanks. Hi everyone, I’m Steven Universe, and…” Steven took a deep breath, rubbed his hand through Zamazenta’s fur, and continued speaking. “I was, as a child, made responsible for the mental welfare of several people when they or someone else should have been able to take care of them, and I developed parentification issues as a result.”

“Hi, Steven…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who's wondering... Steven's team is Zamazenta, (Gigantamax) Toxtricity, Vanilluxe, Clefable, Cinccino, Kommo-O, and Arctovish. If anyone wants to ask, I even came up with a moveset and abilities/items for their teams.


End file.
